‘It’s really messy. And I don’t like messy.”

Greenfield City Council President John Bottomley was chairing his first council meeting on Jan. 17. Three hours into the meeting, Marianne Bullock, new chair of the Economic Development Committee, wanted to table an issue that was working its way to the full City Council since Aug. 9, now a six-month journey.

The council was debating whether to amend a vote taken in 2019 — five years ago — when a “vote swap” deal was made to construct a new library in return for weakening the city’s Major Development Review (MDR) ordinance.

The MDR dates back to 1991. Our Town Council passed a zoning law to “mitigate potential negative impacts … caused directly or indirectly by major development.” The town regulations for MDR Impact Statements in 1991 required all developments generating 500 daily car trips or more to be reviewed.

Twenty-five years later, in 2016, it was raised to 1,000 car trips, then tripled to 3,000 car trips in the 2019 “vote swap.” This allowed more projects to avoid review. Ironically, MDR rarely rejects new developments. It’s so loose, it allowed a 135,000-square-foot Walmart to pass through in 2008 with minor “conditions.”

The first major development to escape an MDR due to the 2019 “relaxed” traffic thresholds was Aldi’s supermarket, which got a site plan approval from the Planning Board in less than an hour and a half. At that meeting, the Planning Board deliberated without a quorum. The mayor and an associate board member voted on the site plan, which violates our charter, and Chapter 40A s. 9.

I testified twice — on Aug. 8 and Nov. 16 — on a motion put forward by Phil Elmer, the former EDC chair. On Oct. 5, 2023, Elmer sent an email to all city councilors explaining the motion to tighten up the MDR traffic threshold:

“The General Commercial thresholds were raised to 3,000 trips per day from 1,000 four years ago by the City Council. In retrospect, they were set too high — i.e., relaxed too much — limiting the city’s oversight and allowing major developments to proceed without major development review. Two thousand trips is the level used by the state for its Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) reviews.”

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The EDC had MDR on its November, December, and January agendas but never passed a motion. One councilor perhaps explained why: “So [Aldi’s] doesn’t have to face these more stringent requirements.”

The new EDC chair, Marianne Bullock, told her colleagues: “Almost every time a zoning change comes in front of us, it’s because of a specific issue, like a specific business or developer, or a thing that’s wanted or changed. We have to actually start looking at zoning in terms of the city system — and not in terms of what specific businesses or developers desire to happen here.”

“It feels wrong to vote on this because of a specific project, because I want to vote on principle,” added At Large Councilor Wahab Minhas. “On principle, I think any project should go through a public review process, and we should use all the tools we have available in local government to do proper scrutiny and see what the impact of what any business will be. We shouldn’t just abdicate our responsibility to vet and scrutinize anyone that would come into town.”

“Three thousand vehicle trips a day is a lot, that’s a very high number.” Councilor Rachel Gordon noted, “so lowering it to 2,000 actually seems very reasonable to me, and subjecting more things in our community to a major development review — when they are major developments — seems reasonable.”

The real mess happened when the council was mistakenly told, repeatedly, that if they tabled the MDR amendment, “it passes automatically.” Bullock read the correct passage from Chapter 40A, s.5, which says the council has 90 days from the City Council hearing to adopt an ordinance. If they take no action, there only has to be a “subsequent public hearing.”

A one-word amendment should not take six months to process. A new citizen petition has been filed to lower the traffic threshold for triggering a review to 2,000 car trips. The city’s lawyer says: ”I would expect that the Planning Board will similarly recommend that this ordinance be approved. If so, the City Council could properly adopt the ordinance.”

Please email citycouncil@greenfield-ma.gov today with this message: “We’ve been waiting since August for this MDR mess to be cleaned up. Please vote for 2,000 car trips at your March meeting, and stop trying to protect developers from scrutiny.”

Al Norman’s Pushback column appears every third Wednesday.